Posted on 12/08/2013 8:32:23 PM PST by Carbonsteel
The likelihood of life on other planets is "very high," a planetary scientist told a House committee in a hearing some Democrats chided as evading U.S. issues.
"The chance that there's a planet like Earth out there with life on it is very high," Massachusetts Institute of Technology planetary science and physics Professor Sara Seager told the House Science Committee.
"The question is: Is there life near here, in our neighborhood of stars? We think the chances are good," she said, answering a question from Rep. Ralph Hall, R-Texas, who asked: "Do you think there's life out there, and are they studying us? And what do they think about New York City?"
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
The number of factors that had to be right in order to get an earth is “large” to understate it grandly.
To get another natively habitable planet within spacecraft travel capability is somewhere between slim and none, with slim having fled town. Quite outside of the questions of creation upon that planet.
There, fixed it!
I'm still trying to determine if there's intelligent life here on Earth! :O
I wonder if it’s possible that God saying “We” in Genesis was speaking of life elsewhere in the cosmos.
See - “The Man Who Changed Everything:
The Life of James Clerk Maxwell”
In 1859, James Clerk Maxwell published his ‘quaternions’ using fields, called garbage by Oliver Heaviside - a self taught mama’s boy.
Heaviside dismissed all but four of Maxwell’s 200 ‘quaternions’ as impossible, changed them from fields to vectors, and from those four come everything we have and know today on electricity and magnetism.
Implicit in Maxwell’s ‘quaternions’ along with the possibility of free energy from the universe, was transitioning from any one point in space to another without the intervening steps, communication between any one point and another - both regardless of time or distance.
Maxwell’s work has been pretty much ignored since the 19th Century.
It could well be that Maxwell’s theories are the Universe’s universal norm, while we on Earth use a rare and antiquated method or communication and travel.
The mind can only recognize what is familiar, so perhaps we - like Heaviside and Maxwell’s fields, cannot see ‘aliens’ or their means of travel for what they are, but instead transpose them into something we can ‘see’: angels, UFOs, ghosts, etc. And then dismiss that meager conclusion as impossible.
Therefore, life and intelligence only arose on Earth, there are no intelligent aliens from other solar systems, travel between solar systems is G-d’s quarantine, and those that believe in aliens are fools who only have beliefs - but know nothing and can be ignored or ridiculed.
he work was difficult, Paabo admits, particularly as the techniques used were sensitive and tended to pick up outside DNA contamination. He also said the bones had been shellacked, which could have preserved the DNA and protected them from contamination by modern DNA.
He said his team ran four separate tests for authenticity - checking whether other amino acids had survived, making sure the DNA sequences they found did not exist in modern humans, making sure the DNA could be replicated in their own lab and then getting other labs to duplicate their results. Comparisons with the DNA of modern humans and of apes showed the Neanderthal was about halfway between a modern human and a chimpanzee.
Assuming the theory is correct, of course! There might be a work around or some subtle effect we don’t know yet.
As far as we know at this point.
In today’s world, with the full might of a beyond the bleeding edge tech equipped all seeing all powerful hyper-government, we are the fuzzballs.
I’m pulling for the fuzzballs, m’self.
First one to figure out how to do it and file, wins!
Me too (but then I would, wouldn't I?)
We don't know how, but we do know that with 100% certainty. We have are an example.
"... the Drake Equation is simply guesswork dressed up to look like data."
And a great reference on the compatibility of possible alien life with Christianity
Take the glasses off. You’ll be more comfortable...
That does not compute.
Alien life is, I think a given. The numbers (odds) are just to overwhelming to argue against it. But intelligence complex life is an entirely different matter. The odds certainly favor it, but if one looks at the history of the Earth it is certainly remarkable that everything happened at just exactly the right time for intelligent complex life to exist here and even then it took 4 billion years for complex intelligent life to evolve. Then another 400 million years before civilization happens.
Perhaps looking at just one single unlikely event needed will illustrate just how lucky we are to be here. Our Moon. Without the Moon there would likely not be complex intelligent life on Earth. The Earth-Moon system is really a binary planet system which locks in a stable orbit for both planets. Our Planet Earth does not wobble about, it stay on an stable axis witch gives us our seasons. If the axis were changing wildly (which they would without the Moon) seasons would chance wildly too. Every 1,000 years or so climates would go from topical to arctic and then back again. In such a world evolution of higher life forms would not be possible. And that is just one example of many needed for us to be here.
We are so very lucky to have our Moon. The Moon is the mother life on Earth. We have our Moon as a result two planets colliding. The young Earth and Thea. Thea (a Mars size planet) hit the Earth at exactly the right angle to form a Moon. How lucky is that? The collision also blew into space our early highly toxic atmosphere (see Venus). How lucky was that? Also little known is that Thea's planetary core merged with ours giving us a large long lasting inner hot core with out which we would be solar toast (see Mars). How lucky was that? The Moon formed quite close to the Earth (20,000 - 50,000 miles). So 4 billion years ago the tides were much much larger then today. And by that I mean hundreds to thousands of feet larger. These earlier tides scoured the land and delivered all of the ingredients needed for life to the early oceans. Then gradually the Moon receded and the tides grew smaller making life on coastal plains possible. How lucky was that?
Well I think you get my point, alien life, yes no doubt. Civilization, probably but not a certainty.
Great minds and all that Jazz.
Also the chances of CIL are unlikely at the edge of just about any galaxy due to a lack of violent activity. It seems to take a few generations of big stars (nearby super novas) to create the materials needed for life. To close to the galactic center is to violent, to far from the galactic center is not violent enough. So we can reasonably eliminate most of the billions of trillions of stars in the know universe. Perhaps only 15% or so are in the right place to possible candidates for CIL.
Still a considerable number of stars. But not all stars are the same. Quite a few of the 15% or so would not be stable enough long enough to permit CIL. Consider this; The Earth has been in the Suns Goldilocks zone for 4 billion years and will remain there for another few hundred million years. Call it 4.5 billion. How many Stars are that stable that long? Only Sun sized or smaller stars. Of course the Goldilocks zone is smaller for smaller stars so the chance of an Earth like (rocky) planet forming there is also less likely.
My point here is not to argue the numbers, they are overwhelming. But also overwhelming is the incredible luck it takes to get the right conditions at the right time for complex intelligent life. It almost makes one think that life here on Earth was planned. Lol, crazy talk!
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